The Asgardr Report - 7th Edition: February 2022

The Asgardr Report aims to provide high-level Fire Emblem Heroes content on a regular basis. Each article will contain 3-4 topics related to the end-game content of the game; Aether Raids (Offense & Defense) and Arena. 

In this month’s edition, we’ll first cover impactful new units and Sacred Seals added to the game this month. After that, we’ll cover each of the top four Hero Rises units and what they offer in addition to the impact they could have becoming more commonplace due to their newfound spark availability. Our usual writer for the Asgardr Report is off somewhere this month, so the hall of fame will be updated at a later time.

In this section, we’ll look over the most impactful units and skills introduced this month and how they may impact the metagame.

Valentine’s Chrom

Valentine’s Chrom is a powerhouse of a player phase unit with great stats all around, an excellent Duo skill, and powerful exclusive skills. In Aether Raids Defense, Valentine’s Chrom is an excellent choice as he can enable Duo’s Hindrance while serving as a potent nuke in many team compositions. To Change Fate! is also incredible for Valentine’s Chrom’s Aether Raids Defense prowess, especially considering it triggers the Destiny Bow’s special cooldown reduction.

This doesn’t even mention the sheer amount of resets the Duo will force simply by deleting a foe’s unit out of nowhere. For Aether Raids Offense, Chrom has utility as an offensive nuke capable of standing toe to toe with many Far Save units, although he will struggle against bulky blue Far Save units such as Brave Hector. A player must keep in mind that they will be unlikely to use their Duo skill due to Duo’s Hindrance, however. Valentine’s Chrom is an amazing choice in Summoner Duels as well, for many of the same reasons: He stops most units from existing by clicking on them, and with a refresher and potential pathfinder unit, he can extend his effective attack range even further and prevent the opponent’s advance if they lack the means to deal with him properly.

Valentine’s Lucina

Valentine’s Lucina is an excellent Save Armor, and although she enters a rather cluttered pool as Green Axe Armors are somewhat commonplace, she manages to stand out as one of the best of the lot. Her Gerbera Axe gives her no cost 40% damage reduction against the foe’s first attack and a hefty boost to her stats as long as the foe initiates on her or the foe is at 75% HP or higher (Read: She will almost always trigger this). The damage reduction provided by her weapon makes Valentine’s Lucina incredibly tanky considering her already gargantuan stat spread, and this is only compounded by her innate Savvy Fighter, a very balanced skill that essentially gives Armors access to Speed-based damage reduction and increases her tankiness to disgusting heights.

The impact of Save Armors in every gamemode need not be stated: being able to deny an ally’s bad matchups and force them to fight an Armor likely specialized in taking down the type of foe they’re weak against is incredibly useful in every gamemode, and this makes Valentine’s Lucina useful in Armor-centric Aether Raids Defense team compositions, Aether Raids Offense, and in Summoner Duels to protect allies from melee foes alike.

Ascendent Idunn

Continuing the slate of powerful Armored units, Ascendent Idunn essentially copied Brave Hector’s homework on how to be a dominant force in the metagame as her Dew Dragonstone features many of the same effects: Follow-up prevention, Accelerated special cooldown, neutralizing Armored weaknesses, lowering the foe’s stats, and neutralizing penalties with an added effectiveness against Armored units and adaptive damage against ranged foes slapped on top because she needs it.

This weapon does lack Maltet’s guaranteed follow-up attack, but Armors have access to so many means of gaining guaranteed follow-up attacks that it’s almost comical at this point, so this isn’t much of a loss. With that said, there’s not much more to say about Ascendent Idunn aside from her being a debatably superior version of an already busted unit. Anywhere Brave Hector is good, (Read: everywhere), she’ll perform just as well and then some.

Legendary Caeda

Concluding our look at the most standout units this month is Legendary Caeda, one of the most overt Cavalry counters ever released (As if they didn’t have enough things to worry about already.) Legendary Caeda’s main draws, aside from her statline, are her exclusive skills. Her Wing-Lifted Spear grants her a hefty stat boost and reverts the foe’s bonuses as long as she initiates combat or has an ally within two spaces of her alongside effective damage against Armor and Cavalry units. However, the main thing that makes Legendary Caeda such a threat to Cavalry and Armored foes is her exclusive B Passive which grants her Vantage against any Armored and Cavalry foes that initiate combat against her and neutralizes effects that prevent her follow-up attacks while granting her Vantage against all foes for one turn after combat. This allows her to mow down many Cavalry units before they can even attack her unless they sacrifice their Sacred Seal slot to use Hardy Bearing.

With that said, Legendary Caeda will have a much more difficult time against Armored units due to their generally beefy Defense even with her effective damage, and some of them can completely negate her effective damage with their exclusive weapons: namely Brave Hector and Ascendent Idunn. This somewhat limits her applications on Aether Raids Offense as she will struggle to consistently break through non-red Near Save units without support and some Armored units will remain out of her reach regardless. Legendary Caeda is a much better choice in Summoner Duels thanks to Save skills being limited to one user per team, meaning she has a much better shot at being able to take down a team’s Save unit as long as their name isn’t Brave Hector. 

Honorable Mentions

• Valentine’s Robin is quite a strong unit, but there isn’t much to say about her besides “She’s a powerful Far Save Armor”, although her supportive utility for Armor-Based Aether Raids Defense teams is worth mentioning. 
• Other fast Armors can potentially take advantage of Savvy Fighter to greatly improve their tankiness in a similar vein to Valentine’s Lucina.
• Fallen Edelgard fans cried out and were suddenly silenced when she lost in the Hero Rises Voting Gauntlet to Hatari Azura. Better luck next time, I suppose.

Everyone’s favorite event of the year went live this month, and after an intense first round, the Hero Rises banner pool has been decided: an all Green banner featuring Ninja Corrin, Hatari Azura, Legendary Byleth, and Thorr. In this section we’ll discuss what each of these four bring to the table and how the metagame could shift based on them becoming more common due to the spark the Hero Rises banner offers.

Ninja Corrin

Ninja Corrin is quite similar to last year’s winner, Ninja Lyn. She boasts excellent offensive stats and a Duo skill that allows her to move again in addition to a weapon that allows her to attack twice. The main difference between the two is Ninja Corrin’s status as a magic-damaging ranged Cavalier, which affords her much greater movement and better damage against foes who lack high Resistance, although she suffers greater difficulties against Red foes as a Green unit.

Ninja Corrin is an excellent addition to Cavalry-based Aether Raids Defense teams and in Summoner Duels alike: We can expect to see more of her in these gamemodes, but she’s already fairly commonplace due to the threat she imposes when initiating combat. In terms of skill inheritance, Ninja Corrin is no slouch either: Giving the always helpful Swift Sparrow 3 in addition to S/R Far Trace, which can be helpful for Tome Cavalry and Fliers alike, although Fliers have difficulty taking advantage of Far Trace’s Canto due to their lower movement compared to cavalry.

Hatari Azura

Another addition to the camp of Cavalry who end Arena runs, Hatari Azura is a Cavalry refresher with a strong offensive statline and access to Legendary Azura’s Gray Waves, giving her the dance we all know and love neatly packaged into a Cavalry unit in addition to a Harmonic skill, which gives the Resonance Blades buff to allies from Fates and Path of Radiance while refreshing the ally from Path of Radiance and Fates with the highest remaining HP, and, needless to say, being able to refresh two allies per turn is incredibly powerful utility for a refresher in all gamemodes. In Aether Raids Defense, Hatari Azura fulfills a similar role to her predecessor, Masquerade Sigurd, as a Cavalry refresher that enables Duo’s Hindrance, albeit much frailer overall.

Summoner Duels is where Hatari Azura really shines, as her ability to grant a unit two actions per turn is incredibly useful in the gamemode when coupled with nukes such as Ninja Corrin (Who can give herself an additional turn to extend the fun even more). Hatari Azura has great skill inheritance as well, featuring Fury 4 as well as S/R Far Trace and Cross Spur Res. Hatari Azura becoming more commonplace could spell great frustration for players of all gamemodes reminiscent of the effects Legendary Azura had on the game in days past, particularly in Arena as Gray Waves coupled with a hard hitting Infantry nuke can easily spell doom for a player’s Arena run. In Aether Raids, this can be alleviated somewhat thanks to the Safety Fence structure and Isolation effects from Bride Fjorm and Mila, however.

Legendary Byleth (M)

The most likely of the winners for disgruntled Edelgard fans to rally behind, Legendary Byleth (M) boasts a strong offensive statline and his exclusive tome, which grants him innate Null Follow-Up and the obligatory spectrum stat boost in combat but, more importantly, grants all of his allies within two spaces access to Null Follow-Up. This makes Legendary Byleth (M) a fantastic offensive support unit as he is the only unit in the game capable of granting limitation free Null Follow-Up to allies at the time of writing.

His main uses are in Aether Raids Offense and Summoner Duels as a support unit to give Null Follow-up to units who otherwise lack access to it, although he still sees some use on Defense teams as a hard-hitting Tome user. Sweetening the deal is Legendary Byleth’s(M) skill inheritance: Time’s Pulse, Atk/Def Ideal, and Lull Atk/Res are all solid skills for Infantry Tome users, although Lulls have fallen off somewhat as visible buffs continually become less desirable to run thanks to the abundance of skills that counter them.

Thorr

The last of our winners is Thorr, a Green Axe Flier who makes for a fantastic addition to Aether Raids Offense teams based around Galeforce thanks to her exclusive skills. The combination of War-God Mjolnir and Worldbreaker allow her to consistently trigger Galeforce after two attacks, and Worldbreaker also frees Thorr from needing to run Heavy Blade when using her as a Wings of Mercy Beacon for Galeforce teams in Aether Raids Offense. Worldbreaker can also be used defensively as it can free up the need for her allies to run the Steady Breath Sacred Seal. However, players must keep in mind that her high Attack can lead to her KO’ing foes in a single hit, and thus, failing to trigger Galeforce in a single round of combat, although this can be remedied by using her with Velouria. Thorr’s Armored effective damage is also a significant boon for Galeforce teams as they could potentially struggle to deal with Armor-centric Aether Raids Defense teams otherwise. Like the other winners, Thorr possesses excellent skill inheritance: In particular Flow Guard is exclusive to her at the time of writing, and is an excellent option for many Melee Cavalry and Melee Flying unit’s B slot skill. All four of the winners are excellent units regardless, so Fire Emblem Heroes players can feel good regardless of who wins (Or at worst can simply inherit the winner’s skills to another unit if they don’t like them.)

With that, this month’s Asgardr Report concludes. This issue may have been shorter than usual, but your regularly scheduled host should be back next month. With all that said, I hope you’ve enjoyed this month’s edition of the Asgardr Report. Until next time, farewell.